


in the end, you're the only home i find

by desmondkilometers (clockworkcorvids)



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anniversary, Canon Divergence - Post-Assassin's Creed III, Desmond Miles Lives, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Assassin's Creed III, Self-Indulgent, Slow Dancing, implied/referenced trauma, it's desmond, no beta we die like men, they are ALIVE and IN LOVE, what do you expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25455280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/desmondkilometers
Summary: Shaun and Desmond celebrate their third anniversary. Contrary to what some who know them might assume, though, itisn’tthe twenty-first of December.
Relationships: Shaun Hastings/Desmond Miles
Comments: 5
Kudos: 39





	in the end, you're the only home i find

**Author's Note:**

> if ubi wont let them be happy, then, uh,,,,  
> fine. i guess ill do it myself. :^
> 
> title from [living water](https://youtu.be/4V6GuCjdtrI) by vancouver sleep clinic :')

Their anniversary, contrary to what some who know them might assume, isn’t the twenty-first of December.

No, Desmond’s not-death has always been his day and his day  _ only _ . Of course, freshly alive and (mostly) in one piece, once he’d concluded that he wasn’t about to dig his own grave, his mind had gone straight to all the things he’d said he wanted to do if only he had the time. Shaun, for his part, had come out of the initial shock with the renewed realization that there wasn’t much  _ he _ wanted to do more than press Desmond against the nearest wall and kiss the breath out of his lungs.

But there had been other things to deal with, and they were both so tired of waiting, but at least they had the certainty, now, that they  _ could _ wait. They didn’t wait long, though.

Now, three years later, on an otherwise arbitrary January day, they relish all the time they’ve been given, and they’re  _ oh _ so glad they didn’t wait around any more than they did. Three years ago today, they kissed for the first time, and it’s frankly a bit cheap to call  _ that _ their anniversary when they’d been dancing around each other for so long before it, but had Desmond died, Shaun wouldn’t have called any time before that an anniversary. There wouldn’t have been anything to celebrate. 

It’s rather nice, anyhow, to have a specific date to look back at, a reminder of how far they’ve made it that is, perhaps, less ominous than the anniversary of what was almost the end of the world.

Three years out finds them waking up in each other’s arms nearly every day, and on this day in particular, it finds Shaun fumbling for his glasses without jostling his partner enough to wake him from his peaceful slumber - and he’s thinking, now, about how Desmond’s face  _ is _ peaceful, not drawn into that anxious pursed-lips furrowed-brows expression he used to always carry when he slept. He still has nightmares, still Bleeds from time to time, but enough time out of the Animus - coupled with heavy therapy and more than a little medication - has enabled him to be somewhat mentally stable. 

Aside from the familiar and welcome sight of Desmond smiling lightly into Shaun’s bare collarbones, arms protectively wrapped around his chest, Shaun is greeted by cool winter sunlight filtering in through the blinds across the room. It’s dim, because Scotland is known for many things, and lots of sunlight is not one of those things, but it’s nice nonetheless. Scotland itself is nice, as well - Shaun spent enough time there as a child to know it fairly well, and he enjoys that the weather is similar to that in Britain - and unlike many of the places they’ve been, Desmond doesn’t have any memories or trauma particularly attached to it. It’s just a normal place, and a lovely one at that, although the normalcy is perhaps the most important part.

If you’d asked Shaun, three or five or ten years ago, whether he thought he’d ever have a normal life again, he would have laughed in your face. Maybe gone for the whiskey as well, once you turned your back. Now, though, while he and Desmond still keep in touch with the Brotherhood, their life is by far very, very normal. They’re still  _ Assassins _ , technically, but they’re not field agents anymore -  _ specifically _ not Desmond. They have a cozy little flat, and they have normal, non-life-endangering jobs (albeit jobs with abnormal hours), and they have their anniversary to celebrate. They’ve found a balance between the lives of Assassins and the lives of ordinary people, which is how they both like it - they want to move on from all the hell they endured, but both of them know they could never live fully ‘normal’ lives even if they wanted to. 

Besides, normalcy is a construct invented to keep people in line. Shaun would never have fun with that.

Although, he has to admit he has a soft spot for the domestic side of things, like this - waking up with the love of his life in his arms, and knowing they have time to savor this, and knowing that they’re both  _ safe _ . 

Desmond, right on cue, makes a noncommittal noise of grogginess into Shaun’s chest. 

“Morning, love,” Shaun says, bringing the hand that isn’t trapped behind Desmond up to cup his head, gently running his fingers through Desmond’s hair, because he can  _ do _ that now. It never fails to make his heart beat a little stronger, knowing that he can do all the silly little things that mean so much more than one might think. Desmond’s growing his hair out a bit, too, and it’s nice, it looks good on him. It gives Shaun more free space to play with it.

“I can hear you thinking,” he mumbles, tilting his head to look up into Shaun’s eyes.

“Since when have you developed telepathy?” Shaun teases, and Desmond groans again. 

“I can see it. In your face.” He reaches up and pokes Shaun on the bridge of the nose, right where his glasses are starting to slip, as they always do. “You get that look like every part of your face but your eyes is squinting.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Shaun complains, even though he’s as enamored as usual (which is to say,  _ very much _ ) with Desmond’s ability to read him so well. 

“You know what today is?” Desmond asks.”

“You’re changing the topic. That’s cheating.”

“Do you?” He’s grinning now, the bastard, and Shaun wants to kiss the smile off his lips - three years, and he still sometimes forgets that he can  _ do _ that now. He grins too as he leans in to do just that, and Desmond hums against his lips in a particular way that makes his heart perform all sorts of strange maneuvers inside his chest. 

“Don’t worry,” Shaun says as they pull apart, foreheads still touching, bodies still slotted together like two pieces of a puzzle, “I already called in to get the day off.” 

Shaun raises an eyebrow. “I hope  _ you  _ \- ” 

Desmond cuts him off with another kiss, notably more passionate this time. Oh, that never gets old. 

“Of course I did,” he says, this time nearly into Shaun’s mouth, which is kind of gross but also endearing. “To the bar  _ and _ the dojo. Can’t have work stealing me away from the most important day of the year.”

This time, it’s Shaun’s turn to halt the conversation with a kiss, and he leans into Desmond’s warm body just as much as he leans into the live wire sparking in his heart at every single one of the numerous reminders that he is so,  _ so _ in love with Desmond Miles. 

By the standards of Scotland in winter, it’s a fairly sunny day. The sunlight is dim, greyish, and not particularly warm, but it still has a rather beautiful effect on the frosted city streets and not-so-distant hills. Shaun and Desmond stay in late, forsaking breakfast for the far more alluring prospect of lying in each other’s arms and simply enjoying both what they have in this moment and what they’ve built in the last three years. They get late mornings often enough, what with the dojo and the university that they respectively work at not offering morning classes every day of the week, but this particular day is different. 

They make it out of bed eventually, even though Desmond clings to Shaun and complains about the cold (he enjoys it almost as much as Shaun, though, to be honest - he just likes having another good excuse to drape himself over his partner like a cat). Shaun brews two cups of black English breakfast tea, which he’s slowly but surely been converting Desmond into favoring, and he gets dressed in between turning on the kettle and retrieving the tea bags, while Desmond is lying on the floor next to the heater, texting Rebecca.

He shamelessly watches Desmond pick out a shirt while he sips his tea, and their hands brush when they go to pick up their toothbrushes at the same time - Desmond, like the horrible Yank he is, downed his entire mug of tea in one go so he could catch up to Shaun. It’s these tiny moments, an infinite amount of small things compounded upon one another, that Shaun lives for. Sure, there are the monumental things, the big in jokes and the firsts and all the things that would go on the record forever if not for the Brotherhood’s operational secrecy, but those things are inconsequential compared to constant, small yet meaningful reminders of the presence of love.

Desmond, though he complains about the cold more, is first and foremost a creature of habit, and the idiot wears nothing but an extra scarf - a gift from Rebecca - over his hoodie. On the bright side, he’s at least bothered to wear long sleeves under it, and it’s not  _ that  _ cold today, but Shaun is just thankful the walk to their favorite cafe is short enough that Desmond won’t freeze. And anyways, he suspects it’s just an excuse for Desmond to cling to him the whole way there, because he’s dressed like a normal,  _ sensible  _ person and is therefore quite warm, and...well, he can’t complain. 

They order their favorite hot teas, because you can  _ never _ have enough hot tea on a chilly winter day, and the cafe’s delicious breakfast sandwiches. Desmond bounces on his heels as he orders, always full of pent-up energy - aside from the extra income and hours, it’s part of the reason he decided to work at a dojo in addition to taking up a bartending job again. The day feels like it’s going by at an appropriately slow pace as they eat their brunch and then spend a while walking around the city until Desmond inevitably gets cold. At this point, Shaun gently drags him to the nearest used bookstore, which he most definitely did  _ not _ strategically direct their walk towards, and Desmond is more than happy to curl up on the couch next to the store’s fireplace while Shaun browses the classics section for some brand new oddity. He’s already acquired his gift for Desmond, days ago now, and though Desmond has successfully kept his own gift hidden, Shaun knows he’s done the same. 

By the time they make it back to the apartment, their cheeks are red from the cold, and they’re both laughing over jokes they won’t remember in a day or even an hour. It’s the afternoon, and they don’t feel like cooking today, so Desmond orders from the Chinese place that Shaun got ridiculously attached to during his first finals season paper-grading crunch here, and he lets Shaun force him to wear an actual coat this time, and he kisses Shaun goodbye before he leaves to go pick up their order. 

Shaun smiles at his back, and then busies himself with setting up his plans for the evening. As the sun gradually moves through the sky, such that the evening light will soon be coming in through the big window in their living room and lighting up most of the flat, Shaun plugs in the fairy lights that hang on all four walls, bathing the room in their soft glow. One wall is lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves - which mostly contain Shaun’s books, but also a steadily increasing number of Desmond’s conquests as he gains hobbies that aren’t directly related to staying alive and teaches himself languages that he hasn’t absorbed from his ancestors. In the corner between the shelves and the window is a small, slightly dented but very sturdy end table, acquired (like most of their furniture) from an antique store, and on it a record player. Shaun delves into the shelf closest to the player, where their record collection (mostly Desmond’s eclectic taste, but also a good deal of classical from Shaun) is stored, and, after a moment’s deliberation, picks out something they’ll both like, a collection of ambient post-rock filled with experimental guitar riffs and soft instrumental pieces.

The sound of the music floats through the flat in a particularly ethereal manner as Shaun makes his way into the bedroom and finds his gift to Desmond where he’d hidden it behind an errant stack of textbooks. It’s a book of the history of bartending - illustrated, of course - and it falls somewhere in the junction between Shaun’s interests and Desmond’s. It’s a bit heavy on the textual stuff, which Shaun knows is an acquired taste for Desmond, but the full-color pictures and - from what he gleaned reading a chapter of it - immersive yet concise writing style make it, he thinks, fairly easy to digest. It also contains a compendium of recipes at the back, many of which are actual or approximated historical ones. He thinks Desmond will get a kick out of that.

The book, wrapped in the simple brown paper that the bookstore had provided him and topped off with a handwritten card (it’s poetry, written in a style that Desmond has described in a curious yet fitting manner as “starting the same as your database entries, and then wildly diverging from  _ that _ route”), goes on the coffee table in between a stack of research papers and a potted succulent that they’ve somehow managed not to kill yet. 

The music changes tracks, the record player letting out that curious little static noise in the brief silence between pieces. It’s interesting, how it does that even with newer records - it must be a feature of the machine itself, because it makes all the records sound almost vintage.

Shaun is standing by the window, gazing out over the city and humming to himself, when he hears Desmond enter the flat again. The door closes, and he turns to find Desmond standing in the threshold cradling a brown paper bag in his arms, face a little too red for it to just be from the cold outside. 

“Is this for  _ me _ ?” he asks, feigning surprise at the lights and the music, but also looking a little bit genuinely startled, as if they haven’t been together for three years. Shaun walks up to him, presses a quick kiss to his lips, and relieves him of the bag. Their hands brush as he takes it, and he lets Desmond kiss him again before he steps back. They have all the time in the world, now.

“Who else would it be for, Des? The bloody Queen?”

Desmond laughs, a sound that is more and more common these days, but which still makes Shaun’s heart swell as if each and every time he hears it were the first. The echoes of his smile mingle with the music emanating from the record player and follow Shaun around the apartment as he goes to deposit the bag on the kitchen island, unpacking compact white containers of rice and tupperware of savory-smelling dumplings and soup and chicken. Meanwhile, Desmond removes his shoes and coat, and Shaun is so distracted by identifying every item in the order that he doesn’t hear Desmond coming up behind him, wrapping his arms around Shaun’s torso, pressing his forehead and then his nose and finally his lips against the place where Shaun’s neck meets his collarbone and gently sort of rocking the two of them back and forth. 

Shaun inhales sharply when Desmond first touches him - old habits die hard - but he can’t really be surprised, not knowing that the other man is an Assassin too, and a damn  _ good _ one at that, of course he can sneak up on Shaun. And he’s used to it, by now, knows there’s no danger no matter how his muscle memory makes him react, so he just closes his eyes and leans into Desmond’s embrace. He remembers that they’re alive, and they’re safe, and they have each other, and this is everything he’s ever wanted and more. 

“I love you,” he breathes, as if it’s a mantra, which he supposes it is. 

Desmond kisses Shaun’s neck again. His jaw. Turning his head - the corner of his lips. And then his lips, full on, bullseye, target acquired.

“I love you too,” he whispers back, like clockwork. The scar on his lips, barely a raised line of skin but noticeable to Shaun nonetheless, brushes against Shaun’s own lips.

Shaun doesn’t really believe in luck, but he wonders, sometimes, how he was lucky enough to get here, now, three years out from what was supposed to be the end of the world.

He turns in Desmond’s arms, and the two of them sway as one unit, as if they’re dancing, and maybe they sort of  _ are _ , even though neither of them really know how. 

They’ll stop, soon enough, because they can both be hopeless romantics at times, but they’re also pragmatic  _ and _ hungry. The music keeps playing as they curl up on the couch and dig into the takeout, though, Desmond’s gift (also clearly a book) having mysteriously appeared on the coffee table next to Shaun’s.

They eat, and they exchange gifts, and they may not make a huge deal out of any of it, but this day is important to them in their own special, personal way. Desmond, for the record, is  _ delighted _ by the bartending book, and he won’t stop laughing about the face Shaun makes when he unwraps his own gift to find that it’s a collection of Leonardo da Vinci’s works - surprisingly, one that he doesn’t already own. The whole thing is in Italian, but that’s not a problem, since Desmond took to teaching it to Shaun back at Monteriggioni, and they never really stopped even when Desmond didn’t actively need the grounding.

Gift exchanging leads to tender kisses, and that - when the record ends and Shaun gets up to switch it out for another - to slow dancing. Which isn’t really  _ dancing _ so much as holding each other and swaying back and forth, but it’s the thought that counts.

“You’re doing it again,” Desmond says at some point, head resting on Shaun’s shoulder. “Thinking so hard it shows in your face.”

“Am I?” Shaun smiles.

“Whatcha thinking about?”

“Us.”

“Damn, I wouldn’t have expected  _ you _ to be the sappy one,” Desmond says, even though they’ve both long since come to the conclusion that, while Desmond is in fact very romantic at times, Shaun is the one who writes love poems and says things like  _ my love _ unironically. 

Shaun laughs. “Sometimes I’m just surprised, you know. That you - that  _ we _ \- actually made it, and everything turned out so bloody well, too.”

“I think we deserve it, personally,” Desmond says, an affront to everything he’s gone through but  _ specifically  _ to Juno and Minerva. “I was willing to die, but I didn’t, and I’m not about to waste a second chance at life.”

Something in Shaun’s chest twists violently, first with the knife of memory, and then with the balm of the present. He focuses on the sensation of Desmond’s warm hands - one still scarred from his near-death - pressing against his shoulder blade on one side and his hip on the other, bunched in his sweater. 

“I’ll admit that I’m biased, but I’m quite glad you feel that way.”

They’re still idly swaying, turning in circles, socks on worn hardwood floorboards and the sunset glowing against everything it touches. Desmond’s rolled up his sleeves, showing off burn scars on one arm and intricate tattoos on the other, and Shaun trails his hands over both. He’s already looking forward to their fourth anniversary, but that’s a year off in the future, and nothing - anticipation or memory - draws Shaun’s attention so much as this exact moment, right here and now, firmly lodged in the present that doesn’t move by in discrete ticks so much as slide forward continuously. 

With Desmond’s chest pressed against his own, it almost feels as if their heartbeats have merged, one unending thrum and thread of being. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! it's nice to know people are still dedicated to this funky little fandom even after ten years <3
> 
> [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTLunRuCGQQ) is the album i imagined them listening to. go check out these artists and worldhaspostrock on youtube, they're all super cool!


End file.
